Did you know that on almost every day of the year, at least one member of the New York Yankee's all-time roster celebrates a birthday? The posts of the Pinstripe Birthday Blog celebrate those birthdays and offer personal recollections, career highlights, and trivia questions that will bring back memories and test your knowledge of the storied history of the Bronx Bombers.

January 6 – Happy Birthday Ralph Branca

No this is not a misprint. The same Ralph Branca who was a twenty-game winner and mainstay of those Boys of Summer Brooklyn Dodger teams of the late forties and early fifties and the same Ralph Branca who gave up Bobby Thomson’s shot heard round the world in 1951, was once a Yankee. It happened after the Dodgers put the Mount Vernon, NY native on waivers during the 1953 season and after the Detroit Tigers did the same, the following season. The Yankees then signed the right-hander nicknamed “Hawk” to a contract and he made five appearances including three starts in pinstripes during the second half of the 1954 season. He won his only decision as a Yankee against the Red Sox. That turned out to be the eighty-eighth and final victory of Branca’s big league career.

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